


And All You Can Do Is Shine and Transform

by YaGirlSkyByte



Category: BanG Dream! (Anime), BanG Dream! Girl's Band Party! (Video Game), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Transformers, F/F, Fluff, Human/Transformer Relationships (Transformers), Pre-Relationship, Soundwave cameos for like a sentence but other than that, There are no actual Transformers characters in this, Yukina is the Transformer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-23
Updated: 2020-02-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:09:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22854490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YaGirlSkyByte/pseuds/YaGirlSkyByte
Summary: Lisa borrows a really, really weird tape from her neighbour.a.k.a. yukilisa but yukina’s a ravage repaint for some goddamn reason
Relationships: Imai Lisa/Minato Yukina
Comments: 7
Kudos: 23





	And All You Can Do Is Shine and Transform

**Author's Note:**

> This is not connected to any other Bandori/Transformers stuff I have made, or will make in the future, unless I decide to continue this specific story. Just so we're clear

“Thanks, Minato-san!”

“You’re very welcome, Imai-san.”

Lisa smiled as she turned and started making her way back down the tower block’s stairwell, making sure to keep a tight hold on the box of old cassettes she’d borrowed. Yusei Minato was a friend of her parents, having lived in apartments directly opposite one another in adjacent buildings for as long as she could remember. She recalled nights spent straining her ears trying to listen to the songs playing in her neighbour’s music room, which was just across from her own bedroom, and one night in particular when she had climbed across the balconies in an attempt to get a better listen. After that, her parents had put a fence up around the balcony on her side to stop it from happening again, only taking it down when they thought she was old enough to know better. She didn’t, of course, but she was old enough to, which made it much easier to pretend she did. She looked down at the box in her hands, stuffed full of tapes - some old favourites she’d hearn again and again as a child, a few she’d still never listened to even after all these years, and most excitingly, some blank tapes for her to record herself with. She didn’t fancy herself much of a musician, but she did play bass to an extent, and it was fun to make little recordings and imagine.

Maybe some other lifetime.

* * *

A soft  _ click _ from the cassette player as another tape came to an end - a demo, called LOUDER, by Minato-san’s own band. Lisa had heard all about them - they’d played together for a time, found some moderate success, but had disbanded shortly before they were scheduled to play at Future World Fes, the show that was sure to be their big break. She’d asked, many times, why they had done so, but she had never received an answer, and by now she figured she probably never would. Not that it really mattered, of course. What mattered was the music, and the music was great.

She looked up from her homework to remove the tape from the player, carefully placing it back in its case and the case back in the box before withdrawing the next one - also homemade, by the looks of things. Strangely, the case seemed to be entirely blank, with no indication of what lay within. The tape inside, which was a soft, silvery colour, was labelled, but only in a strange language Lisa didn’t recognise. Her curiosity piqued, she inserted the tape into the player and hit play.

Lisa returned to her homework in the moment of silence before the music began, though ultimately not for long. She recognised the song - she’d just listened to it, in fact. LOUDER, but different this time - there was no music, just unaccompanied singing, and the voice was unfamiliar. The singer was a woman, singing with a raw passion the likes of which Lisa had never heard before, haunting and enthralling. Lisa sat completely still, her homework abandoned, entranced by the music coming from her headphones.

The song ended, another  _ click _ signifying that that was that for this tape. Lisa immediately stood, dashing across her room to grab her bass before returning to her seat and setting the tape to play again. This time, she tried to play along, working out a simple bassline to try and enhance the sound of the mysterious vocalist. She’d never brag about her musical ability - she didn’t think much of it at all, in fact - but, playing side by side with this voice, she felt confident, a reassuring sensation that she was doing well accompanying her for as long as the song lasted. Something was weird, though. She realised it was all in her head, and it was probably just the bass accompaniment playing tricks on her, but she could swear the song had sounded… just a little different, that second time. Like a different take by the same singer. And the sound quality, she realised, was infinitely superior to any other tape she’d ever heard. It almost sounded like she was in the room with her.

Feeling oddly proud of her musical ability for once, she flipped the tape over, eager to see if there was anything else by this singer. A few moments of silence passed, broken only by the whir of the tape inside the machine. Dejected, Lisa began to reach for the eject button - but just before she could hit it, the song began.

She didn’t recognise this one. This one was  _ new _ . It was clearly the same singer, though, once again performing unaccompanied. This time though… Lisa hadn’t thought it was possible, but if anything, this time she seemed even more energised, even more emotional, and Lisa found herself once again unable to move, lost as she was in this enigmatic voice.

She didn’t get her homework done that night.

* * *

“Hey, Lisa-chi! What’s that?”

“Hmm? What’s what?” Lisa was distracted from her musings by her ever-curious classmate, and part-time idol, Hina Hikawa.

“That song you were humming just now! It was really boppin’! Did you write it yourself?”

“Oh, no, I couldn’t-! It’s by, ah. A family friend!”

“Ooh, do you think they’d wanna write anything for Pastel*Palettes? I’d really love to play a song like that, but all of our music has more of a whooshidy sound, y’know? And your song’s all zappidy, like what Onee-chan used to play!”

“Oh, does Sayo-san not play guitar anymore?”

“No, she quit just after I joined Pastel*Palettes. And I wanted to play together, too…”

“Aw, that’s a shame.” Lisa had only ever met Sayo once or twice, but when she had she’d always seemed incredibly serious about her playing. It seemed awfully strange that she’d just quit like that… but then, Lisa supposed, she didn’t really know Sayo that well. She probably had a perfectly good reason to quit… but it still didn’t sit quite right with her…

“Yeah… but I think if we could find her the right sound again, maybe she’d be interested!”

Lisa nodded thoughtfully, unsure of what to say.

“So what about it?”

“What about what?”

“Your friend! Could they write anything for Pastel*Palettes?”

“Oh! Um… I don’t think they’d be interested, but… I guess I can ask…?”

* * *

“Minato-san!”

At the sound of his name, Yusei looked up to see Lisa jogging towards him, waving enthusiastically. “Imai-san?”

“Glad I caught you.” Lisa smiled, coming to a stop beside him just outside his apartment building. “Ah, can I ask you a few questions?”

“It’s fine, I’m in no hurry.” Yusei smiled warmly, knowingly.

“Ah, well, first of all, a friend of mine, she’s in a band, you might have - no, you know what, doesn’t matter - but she wanted to know if you’d maybe be interested in writing a song for them to perform…?”

Blink. “Oh. Um… you’ll have to offer them my apologies, Imai-san, but I’m not really interested in returning to the music business at the minute.”

“Oh, well, no worries! I’m sure she won’t mind, she’s not really the type to get hung up on that sort of thing, haha…”

“...Was there anything else, or…?”

“Oh! Yeah, about one of the tapes I borrowed yesterday, the sort of… silvery-purply one?”

That knowing smile returned. “Ah, yes.  _ That _ tape. I know the one you mean.”

“Good, okay, so… who is that singer?”

Blink blink. “Singer?”

“Yeah. She did LOUDER and, ah, some other song I didn’t recognise? She’s really good, I was wondering who it was…”

“...I’m sorry, Imai-san, I must have gotten confused. The tape  _ I _ was thinking of was blank, and I don’t recall anyone besides myself ever performing LOUDER. I’ll see if I can find any record of it, though, if you like?”

Lisa nodded. “That’d be great, thanks! See ya!” With that, she ran off, rounding the corner and entering her own building.

Yusei pinched the bridge of his nose. “Honestly, that girl…” he sighed wearily. “I thought she said she  _ wanted _ to talk to her…?”

* * *

Lisa’s room was still as empty as it had been when she left it that morning. She dumped her bag on the floor and threw her tie to one side as she made her way over to her desk, where that curious tape still lay, next to a series of scribbled, fruitless attempts to decode the strange symbols that were written on it.

Her eyes narrowed. She looked closer. Beneath her work were two words, English, in handwriting she didn’t recognise.

“BLACK SHOUT”

Words from that mysterious song.

Did her dad write that? No, no, he couldn’t have. It didn’t look anything like his handwriting. Not her mum’s, either, and besides, she was still at work. She wouldn’t have had the chance to come home all day.

“Lisa!” Her dad’s voice, from the front door. “I’m going out to run some errands; I’ll be back in a few hours, okay?”

“Okay! Bye!” She called back, finally tearing her eyes from the mysterious writing.

_ Click _

Silence, and she was alone.

Figuring there must be some perfectly logical explanation, she shuffled the papers and the tape to one side and settled down to do some homework.

“Imai-san.”

And she immediately fell out of her chair.

She scrambled to her feet, head whirling around in panic, wielding her pen like a blade. “Who’s there?”

“My apologies. This is rather an awkward introduction, isn’t it?”

Lisa hadn’t stopped moving. “A-are you a… g-ghost?”

“I’m not a ghost. I’m on your desk.”

She turned back, eyes wide with fear, surveying the work surface carefully.

Then she realised that the voice sounded familiar.

Cautiously, holding her pen at arm’s length, she gently prodded the tape.

“Yes. That’s me.”

She jumped, dropping her pen in fright. Words stumbled incomprehensibly from her mouth, tripping over her tongue as she backed up onto her bed. “You  _ are _ a ghost!”

“I’m not a ghost. Stand back and watch closely.”

Despite herself, Lisa did as she was told, watching the desk intently from her position on the exact opposite side of the room. For a moment, nothing happened.

Then the tape moved.

At first, just the slightest twitch, as though some invisible wire were manipulating it. And all of a sudden it leapt up, shattering and shifting and  _ growing _ , rearranging itself until it - whatever  _ it _ was - landed on her bed.

It was clearly made of metal, that same strange silvery-purply colour that the tape had been. It resembled a cat, with its pointed ears and flat face and glowing yellow eyes that somehow conveyed a sense of world-weariness, though its size was closer to that of a large dog. Parts of its body seemed to be comprised of parts of the tape, albeit blown up to gigantic proportions - most notably, the holes were clearly visible on its haunches, although they had been filled in at the back so that the machine wasn’t see-through.

“My name is Yukina Minato.” the cat said, matter-of-factly. Lisa just stared, her mouth flopping open and shut helplessly, failing to produce a sound.

“I suppose this probably warrants an explanation.”

* * *

War, furious, endless, without end, in danger of losing its beginning. Two armies, metal against metal, locked in a brutal battle for domination of the galaxy. She scarcely remembered, but occasionally she would see a face, or something like one, forever obscured as it was by an unfeeling mouthplate and a glaring yellow visor. His name was lost to her, as were the details, but she could remember his cruelty, how the cries and screams of his victims were music to his ears. She vaguely recalled others like her, beasts in his service, but they shared his passion in a way she never did.

She remembered she had to escape, and clearly she had, but she had no memory of how. Whether her amnesia was a deliberate consequence of her actions or merely happenstance was lost to her, and she didn’t care to regain it. She was perfectly willing - she was happier - to pretend that her life had begun here, on Earth.

The first thing she truly remembered was music. It was playing not far from where she had landed, in some drab, snowed-over farm far enough from civilisation to be secluded, but not far enough to be inconvenient. She had lain there for some time, making some small futile attempt to grasp onto her past life before simply letting it wash over her, the strange unfamiliar harmonies of an alien world.

Eventually, the music stopped, yet she still could not summon the energy to move.

He had found her not long after that. She thought him an awfully strange creature at first, made of flesh and bone rather than metal and circuits, and it seemed that he thought the same of her. He spoke to her, and seemed awfully surprised when she spoke back. She asked him things about the world she now found herself on, and he answered gladly. She told him she had no power, so he took her to a generator where she could recharge. She told him she had no home, and so he took her in, giving her a room to do with as she pleased. She told him she had no name, so he gave her one, one that recalled where she had come into this world. His name, she learned, was Yusei, but as she familiarised herself with the culture of her new home, she came to think of him as a father, and realised that she herself was like a child, knowing nothing and constantly making mistakes, ruining things.

A few months after he accepted her into his home, he stopped playing music. He always said, when she asked, that it was nothing to do with her, that it was his own decision, but she knew he was lying. Of course it was her fault. Raising her, making sure she didn’t get herself - or worse somebody else - killed had become his top priority. It was because of her that he had to give up on his dream. And so she began to bury herself in the music that had welcomed her, studying it, using her new Earthly alternate mode to attempt to create her own, but to no avail.

A few years after she arrived on Earth, a girl appeared. She snuck into Yukina’s room quite often, but she always made sure never to show herself. This world was unfamiliar with alien life, she had learned, and much as her father tried to convince her otherwise, she knew she could not let anybody else see her. After all, he hadn’t told anybody else he was raising a biomechanical alien as his daughter. “That’s different,” he had insisted, but she knew it wasn’t. She really didn’t know why he insisted on keeping things from her, she always figured it out anyway.

The girl’s name, she soon learned, was Lisa, and Lisa liked music. Whenever she came over, there were a few specific songs she always wanted to hear, and when Yukina learned where Lisa lived, she would play those songs sometimes when she saw that Lisa’s light was on, hoping she’d be able to hear. Eventually, Lisa began trying to learn how play her own music, and would borrow tapes with increasing frequency as she attempted to learn to play along with them. Yukina would tell her father which tapes to give her, tapes she knew, or at least hoped, she’d like. On rare occasions, Lisa would bring a tape of her own in return for Yusei to add to ‘his’ collection, and Yukina would always treasure those tapes, more for the person who introduced her to them than for their actual content. On some nights, if she listened closely, she could hear the faint, uneasy sound of Lisa’s playing, always starting over whenever she made a mistake. Yukina loved those nights, and lamented their absence as they grew less frequent.

Eventually, as the sounds of the bass from next door stopped entirely, Yukina came to a decision.

“I want to speak to Lisa.”

Much like his daughter, Yusei Minato was not an expressive man, but anyone could see his surprise upon hearing that out of nowhere.

“ _ You _ want to speak to  _ her _ .”

“Yes.”

He blinked again.

“Really?”

“I’m failing to see what’s so unreasonable about this request.”

“It’s not that it’s  _ unreasonable _ , it’s just that… well, you’re always saying we can’t let anyone else know about you, lest there be terrible consequences.” Yukina acknowledged the gently mocking tone of the end of his sentence, but elected to ignore it.

“I have known Lisa my whole life. I feel I can trust her.”

He smiled. “You’ll find that’s true of a lot more people than you think.”

“Hm.”

“Why now, though?”

Yukina thought for a moment of how long it had been since she’d heard Lisa’s bass, how she missed it. “I simply think it’s time I made a friend.”

* * *

“...Wow.” Lisa uttered, dumbfounded, as Yukina finished her tale.

“I understand that this is a lot to take in.”

“No, no, it’s just…” She put a hand to her mouth, as though trying to prevent every possible question from tumbling out at once. “So… you’re an alien?”

“Yes. Although if you are curious, I do not remember any details of my homeworld beyond what I have already told you.”

“Right, right, okay…” She nodded in understanding, before her eyes narrowed in realisation. “So all those cassettes I borrowed…”

“Were mine, yes. On my recommendation.”

Lisa smiled, for the first time since Yukina had spoken, and she felt her spark pulse strangely. “Thank you.”

Yukina looked away. “...I was merely sharing some music I thought to be interesting. It really is nothing.”

She felt the bed shift beneath her as Lisa sat down. “You’re cute.” A hand on her head; her ear twitched, and she flinched. “Sorry, was that--?”

“It’s fine.” Yukina answered, a little too quickly. Lisa’s hand cautiously returned to her head, gently petting her.

“....You’re warm.”

“I’m… running a little hot at the moment. Just due to the stress of the situation, you understand.”

“Uh-huh.”

After a few peaceful moments, Lisa took her hand away. Yukina very briefly considered following it, but wisely decided not to.

“So… you wanna play?”

“Hm?”

“Music, I mean.” Lisa clarified with a nervous laugh. “You seem… pretty into it, and all…”

Yukina smiled. “Yes. Yes, I think I would.”

* * *

“Wow.” Lisa breathed, finally setting her bass back down. “You are… a  _ really _ good singer.”

“Thank you.” Yukina responded impassively. “You are quite skilled yourself. Although I did notice you fell behind on some parts…”

“Ah, half of that was improvised. I think I did pretty good!”

“You did. Of course you did.”

Silence fell once again, much more comfortable in the wake of their performance.

“Future World Fes…” Lisa murmured softly as she stared at her ceiling.

“What about it?”

Lisa looked up with a start, as though she wasn’t aware Yukina had been able to hear her. “Oh, well… you said your father wanted to play there, right?”

“Yes. But because of me, he couldn’t.” She said it awfully matter-of-factly, without a hint of angst. But Lisa knew better. Why else would she be so convinced it was her fault?

“Wanna do something about that?”

Yukina cocked her head. “What do you mean?”

“Well, we’re pretty good, right? Maybe if he can’t reach that stage anymore… we could go in his place?”

“Well,  _ I _ certainly can’t. And I don’t think a solo bassist would be able to get very far, no matter how skilled.”

Lisa sat up, her eyes beginning to sparkle as her mind raced to throw together this new idea of hers. “We’ll think of something. We can put together a band! And… I mean, you want to perform all this music you’ve been writing, don’t you?”

“Of course I do. But I don’t see how…”

“Who cares? We’ll say you’re a robot, or a puppet or something! It doesn’t matter! You’ll never be able to perform if you don’t take this first step!” She extended her hand. “So you wanna take it with me?”

Yukina stared for a moment at Lisa’s bright, grey-green eyes, then at her open palm. Just for a moment. Then she gave Lisa her paw. “Very well. But I still don’t see how this is going to work.”

“Ah, I’ll figure it out, trust me!” Lisa declared, waving away her concerns. “Heck, I’ve already got step one figured out: the band! Now, where’s my phone…?” She grabbed the device from her desk after a second of searching, quickly tapping some buttons and holding it to her ear.

_ Bzzt _ .

_ Bzzt _ .

Someone answered.

“Hey, Hina-chan! Yeah… hey, can I speak to Sayo real quick? I think I might have found something she’ll be interested in…”

**Author's Note:**

> raise a suilen cover praise be to decepticon challenge 2k20


End file.
